Getting To the Truth

WHEN THOMAS JEFFERSON was about forty five years old, he started a relationship with a girl who was either fourteen or fifteen, and the relationship lasted almost forty years, until Jefferson died. The girl was one of Jefferson's many slaves, and although she was only one quarter black, and looked white, she was considered black, and was therefore a slave. They never got married; they hid the relationship, even though it was perfectly obvious to anybody who knew Jefferson. Jefferson's enemies accused him of bestiality, and his friends just looked the other way. The most incredible thing about this story is that a very high majority of historians who have written about Jefferson have claimed that the relationship never happened, that it was just an unfounded rumor, believe it or not. Only recently have a few brace scholars dare accpet the truth, and tell the truth. Some of the greatest historians in American history havbe written about Jefferson, denying the truth. Their reasons are fascinatingly lmae: Jefferson was much too much a gentlemen to have done anything like that. The story was made up. The problem is, there were five or six kids, children of the slave Sally Hemmings, who looked exactly like TJ, and many of their descendants are around today, and I believe, although I'm not certain, that DNA tests have been done, which confirm Jefferson's paternity. Jefferson himself was quite the racist, and we tend to overlook that. If we are going to teach about certain people in school s and history books because these people are so important, then, exactly what should we teach about them? The important things about them, certainly. That leaves it open to judgment, to a point. But above all else, we must, one would think, teach and write the truth about people, about who they were, what they did. If they are important enough, for whatever reason, to teach about and write about, surely they are worth telling the truth about. The question is: how much do we tell? Grade schoolers probably need only think of Jefferson as the third president, but surely, by the time we get to college, sitting in that history lecture at Harvard, the professor ought to say something about Sally Hemings, in order to give a complete, or substantial, picture of the man. Thomas Jefferson thought black people were inferior to white, especially intellectually, and he said so. This is strange, since he was such a scientific minded person. He payed close attention to detail, but he missed the boat about race. Perhaps he was confusing formal education with intelligence, the the blacks he knew simplly lacked the education. We don't alway get to the truth, even when we try to. And when we don't try to, we have no chance at all.